1. Technical Field:
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a head gimbal assembly (hereinafter referred to as an HG assembly) serving as a component of a hard disk drive, and in particular to a method for connecting a terminal held by the slider of the HG assembly to a head, and a lead held by the HG assembly that is connected to an external unit.
2. Description of the Related Art:
Referring to FIG. 12, a conventional head gimbal assembly connection method includes a flexure 101 for holding a slider 102. The slider 102 is disposed at the front end of an HG assembly and integrally held by a bonding fixture 100. A platform 103 serving as the foremost end of the flexure 101 fixes and holds the vicinity of the front end of a lead 104 through an insulating sheet 105. Four bonding pads 108 connected to a head (not shown) are formed on the front end face of the slider 102. The front end of each lead 104 is curved so as to approach the bonding pad 108 (shown by a broken line in FIG. 12).
A wedge 106 of an ultrasonic bonder is moved by moving means (not shown) in the direction of the arrow K to press the front end of the lead 104 against the contacted bonding pad 108 at a predetermined load. In this state, ultrasonic vibrations (at approximately 60 kHz) are applied to the wedge 106 in the direction of the arrow L to bond the lead 104 to the bonding pad 108.
When the front end of the lead 104 is pressed against the bonding pad 108 by the wedge 106, a pair of supports 107 are set to the bottom faces of both the sides of the platform 103 in order to prevent the platform 103 of the flexure 101 from being deflected due to the rigidity of the lead (FIG. 13). When the lead 104 is pressed in this manner and ultrasonic vibrations are applied, the lead 104 is plastically deformed and bonded to the bonding pad 108 and stabilized.
However, because it is difficult to accurately bring the support 107 into contact with the platform 103 without forming a gap h (FIG. 13) between the platform 103 and the support 107, or without pushing the platform 103 up for the accuracy of the bonding fixture 100 or positioning accuracy of the ultrasonic bonder 70, the flexure 101 may be deformed during this step. If the flexure 101 is deformed, the static posture of the HG assembly becomes unstable and the flight posture of the slider 102 may be affected.